The present invention relates to caching the memory of a computer system and, in particular, to a cache with a temporal-spatial organization.
As is known in the art, the system cache in a computer system serves to enhance the system performance of modern computers. For example, a cache may maintain data between a processor and relatively slower system memory by holding recently accessed memory locations in case they are needed again. The presence of a cache allows the processor to continuously perform operations utilizing the data in the faster-accessing cache.
In a traditional cache design, the spatial organization of the cache mirrors that of the larger memory of which the cache is a subset. When a data from a requested address is not present in a cache, a cache entry must be allocated to receive the requested data. In a spatially-organized cache the replacement choice is often made using a least-recently-used method to select the cache entry to allocate from a small set of eligible candidates.